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Monthly Archive: January, 2007

January 10, 2007

Be Sure the Survivors Stay Buried

The South  Korean government is going all out to find the remains of its  Korean War dead:  The Defense Ministry has set up a task force to retrieve and identify the remains of the dead from the 1950-53 Korean War, officials said Wednesday. The team of 85 is modeled after the U.S. Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command. Its mission is to excavate remains and identify them through DNA analysis, they said. Col. Park Sin-han, chief of the team, said they would...

Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Korean War/ROK Military
January 10, 2007

Two Questions for Lee Jae-Joung

1.  If poverty is  really the reason why North Korea builds nukes, then why is it that the people who actually built the thing  have so much higher a standard of living than  I do  (contrarily, I wonder how much Lee really knows about what poor North Koreans think about this)? 2.  If the key to denuclearization is ending poverty in North Korea, why has your government tolerated the North Korean regime’s theft of your government’s aid from the neediest...

Categories Appeasement/Famine & Food Aid/WMD
January 10, 2007

German Newspaper: Supernotes Are a CIA Plot!

Things sure have gotten strange over in the Soft Reich when a major German newspaper, the Frankfurter Allemaigne Zeitung, theorizes — in a complete evidentiary vacuum, too — that North Korean supernotes are actually a secret CIA plot run  from from a printing house in the DC area  (Korean link).  The sole basis for this novel theory, besides the unshakeable conviction that George W. Bush must be responsible for all evil on earth, is that counterfeiting is simply too complex...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Counterfeiting/Europe/WMD
January 10, 2007

The Death of an Alliance, Part 62: South Korea’s Government (and North Korea’s Agents) Try to Veto USFK Restructuring

Update 1/10:   The Korean reaction to General Bell’s push-back has actually ranged from the restrained (the leftist Hankyoreh picked up Yonhap’s coverage, quoted below, but had no editorial comment) to the rueful (the conservative Chosun Ilbo’s reporting focused blame on its own government): A key U.S. military official handling Korea’s national security has voiced his discontent with an ally by using the word “fight”. After the press conference, Korea’s Ministry of National Defense rushed to contain the situation by saying...

Categories An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea
January 9, 2007

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 17

After North Korea showed up at last month’s disarmament talks just long enough to give the United States the finger, you wouldn’t expect us to go wobbly on our financial measures against North Korea’s financing of WMD’s, counterfeit currency, and other illegal proceeds.  With the passage of U.N. Security Council Resolutions 1695 and 1718, those measurements have become requirements.  The good news is that we’re not going wobbly. Treasury, mainly in the physical form of Undersecretary Stuart Levey, has been...

Categories "United" Nations/Axis of Evil/Counterfeiting/Iran/Money Laundering/NK Economics/WMD
January 9, 2007

Will They or Won’t They?

The USFK Commander, General B.B. Bell, thinks another North Korean nuke test is “likely,” although the South Koreans remain in denial mode. Update:   As Kalani  points out in the comments, the headline arguably misstates what Bell actually said: There is no reason to believe that at some time in the future, when it serves their purposes, that they won’t test another one,” General B.B. Bell told a news conference. “So I suspect some day they will,” Bell said, adding...

Categories An Alliance?/U.S. Military/WMD
January 9, 2007

Chosun Ilbo Draws ‘Line of Death!’

Let’s start by giving credit where it’s due.  The Chosun Ilbo wrote a great headline:  “An Offer Worth Throwing Into the East Sea.”  Nice.  They refer to President Roh Moo Hyun’s howler about renaming the Sea of Japan the “Sea of Peace.”  This is just the latest new low in Korea’s unhealthy obsession with things that do not matter, to the detriment of addressing things that matter. [T]he president, without careful scrutiny, blurted out an impromptu proposal about an issue...

Categories Japan & Korea/WTF?
January 8, 2007

Give Peace a Chance! Announcing the OFK Tokdo Renaming Contest!

With Roh Moo Hyun having proposed “Sea of Peace” to resolve the artificial nomenclature controversy between “East Sea” and “Sea of Japan,” and in the spirit of preventing what  would be the most needless conflict since the siege of Troy, it is time for us to take the next logical step and resolve the controversy between “Tokdo” and “Takeshima.”  Please join me in making history, and help  give peace a chance.     I open the bidding with a few suggestions:

Categories Humor/Satire/Japan & Korea
January 8, 2007

U.S. and Japan Quietly Prepare for North Korean Collapse

The Asahi Shimbun said the government has estimated that 100,000 to 150,000 people would arrive from North Korea and has been discussing with the United States how to deal with such a situation. Japan could only provide temporary shelter for several tens of thousands of displaced persons and would need to consider transferring them to third countries in such a case, the Asahi quoted government sources as saying. The refugees are expected to head to southern Japan from ports on...

Categories An Alliance?/Japan/Japan & Korea/Reconstruction/U.S. Military
January 8, 2007

Put This Book on Your List

North Korea expert Peter Hayes – the executive director of the research group Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainable Development – described the novel as ”the best unclassified account of how North Korea works and why it has survived all these years when the rest of the communist world capitulated to the global market a decade ago.””This novel should be required bedtime reading for President Bush and his national security team,” Hayes said. And that was precisely the point of...

Categories Books & Films
January 8, 2007

Will John Negroponte Put Some Steel in Our Korea Policy?

If so, it would be good news. I’ve argued on this blog that the G.W. Bush policy isn’t really that different from the Bill Clinton policy on the fundamentals. Both shared the same set of  essential beliefs: that North Korea has a genuine interest in disarming, for the right price; that such a disarmament is achieveable, verifiable, and enforceable; implicitly, that North Korea’s nuclear proliferation can be contained; implicitly, that North Korea is more dangerous if its regime is destabilized...

Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views/WMD
January 7, 2007

N. Korean Freedom Coalition Protests Thai Generals’ Pact With China’s Inhumanity

You may recall my previous post about the decision of the Thai military government to launch an “offensive” against North Korean refugees crossing into Thailand after a long and dangerous journey through China. The decision, by a government run by a military junta, reverses what had been the most humane policy in an undemocratic region. As is often true, democracy was only the first casualty; humanity soon became the next casualty. The generals’ decision comes despite the fact that the...

Categories "United" Nations/China/Human Rights/Refugees/Southeast Asia
January 7, 2007

Chinese Police Raid LiNK Refuge, Arrest Three U.S. Activists and Six Refugees

Update 1: I’m going to bump this post up a few times. Meanwhile, I second Kyochan’s advice: Digg the story. I didn’t have an account, but it only took a few seconds to sign up. And I see that Reporters Without Borders is e-mailing half the world over … Saddam Hussein’s execution! Well, here, here! Let’s exhume the old bus-bombing rapist. Scroll down to see my response, and RSF’s reply to that. They claim not to have an opinion on...

Categories Activism/China/China & Korea/Human Rights/Refugees
January 7, 2007

August Statesmanship, Uri Style

Satan: I thought I killed you! Saddam Hussein: Well, where was I gonna go? Detroit? The Uri Party continues to breathe with the assistance of an iron lung and a feeding tube. In that interminable moment after the first mortar round hits the chicken farm, its members are smacking into each other as they all rush for different exits. Thus we have rebellions breaking out within the larger rebellion, led by the incumbent ruling party chair, Kim Geun-Tae. And it’s...

Categories Korean Politics
January 7, 2007

You Can’t Eat Plutonium

The Daily NK previously reported that Pyongyang’s patrician class had swallowed the whole “barrel of a gun” spin after North Korea’s nuclear test.  It didn’t surprise me to hear that.  I’d even predicted it. I’m equally unsurprised that North Korea’s proles, and some of its urban youth, are less impressed and seem completely disillusioned with the course of things. Young adults in Pyongyang commonly call Kim Jong Il as “that guy,” whereas in the province of Hamkyung, Kim Jong Il...

Categories Deprogramming/Inside NK/Resistance